Remy’s heart flooded with love. That was what it felt like: a warm, watery gush that swept away every lingering pebble of resentment he had harbored. I am free, he thought. Free of the hurt I’ve carried around all these years. All his life, he had foolishly believed that love had to be declared—expressed and made visible with words and gifts. But in one day, Shirin had taught him a transformative lesson: love was also restraint. What it must have cost her all these years to hold her silence, to not reveal the secret that would’ve turned him against his father.
